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Why So Many Battery Complaints?

Interesting process. After I went to Dev Options and selected ART, it asked if I would mind if it rebooted. After the reboot, it popped up "Android is upgrading... Optimizing app xx of xxx" (220 in my case). It's not a quick process - took 15 minutes for mine. Then it went to "Starting apps." and that took another couple of minutes.

Everything seems the same afterwards, except for one thing. The lock screen behaved strangely at first. I have Beautiful Widgets as my default lock screen. It didn't show the weather any more when I unlocked and swiped down, and unlocking popped up the default lock screen, which I had to clear to get to home. I had the phone plugged in, though... after I unplugged it, the lock screen started working normally (even after plugging it in again). Small glitch, but strange.
 
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As for an explanation, here is one that seems pretty good. You turn it on under the Developer Options in Settings.

FYI, if you can't find the Developer Options in the settings menu, here are the steps to make it visible:

Go to Settings>About Phone and scroll down to Build Number and tap on it rapidly until a little message pops up saying you are now a developer. Back out to the Settings menu and you should have Developer Options visible.

I just noticed this on my VZN Developers Edition so I'm not sure if it's a Verizon thing, a Dev Ed thing, or what...
 
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You may notice an oddity here and there the first time you open an app. I had a similar glitch on one but can't recall which now. Whatever it was is working just fine now. There may be apps that just don't want to play nice with ART still, you may have a few of those too (I don't seem to, so far).

I checked out videos to see how much faster ART. Personally I could not see a big difference. Can you comment on your view?
 
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It's not a huge difference, but I do think (and it could all be in my head) that apps open a bit faster and screen-flipping seems snappier and smoother. Just sort of a quicker feel. Like if you change animation speeds in settings, it zips things along. ART seems to be like a better/faster animation setting.

What I have noticed is better battery life. Not leaps and bounds better, but better. I'll take any improvement that I can get there!

They are subtle differences (for me), but there is no downside that I've noticed yet.
 
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